AUtomotive data-Tainting fOr Privacy aSsurance sYstem – AUTOPSY

Rapidly evolving digital technologies such as the IoT, cloud and AI overrun classical industries, such as automotive, which have longer innovation and development cycles. The current trend of interconnecting cars with local infrastructure and cloud backends opens large potentials for data-driven applications, enhanced user experience, and new business models but also needs to consider privacy of the users inside the vehicle and others, just observed in the streets. This becomes especially critical with respect to GDPR.

Goal of AUTOPSY is to create a better understanding of the data flows in automotive environments in the light of GDPR and create a privacy-aware system model for an automotive use-case to address various aspects of GDPR in specific technical designs. The technology of tainting will be applied to separate communication streams between the sensor and multiple parties accessing and processing the data with different privileges. AUTOPSY aims to design a dynamic and scalable end to end infrastructure that protects the data with lightweight privacy preserving techniques onboard the vehicle.

Across the expertise of the different partners, the practical feasibility is demonstrated by modifying a resource constrained TCU with an implementation of the privacy-preserving techniques and evaluating its communication on the one hand, and the interaction with a cloud backend on the other.

Bringing together one applied research partner and one automotive supplier from each country combines domain know-how and technological competencies to address the problem, develop new technologies and later enable new transnational services for customers. Transnational dissemination activities and the exchange of young researchers complement the research.

To have privacy preserving techniques by design close to deployment in new cars in 2030 requires to start now and bring project results in the specification of the new automotive architectures in 2023-2024, which coincides with the earliest end of the project.